Reading Signposts: Tough Questions
Link to YouTube Video
Greetings and salutations Scribblers!
We’ve made it to the fifth of six Reading Signposts from the book Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers, and Robert E. Probst. This book is designed for classroom reading and ELA teachers, but the reading signposts they talk about are excellent for authors to be aware of as well. Not only are they elements of good storytelling, but if you’re hoping your novel ends up as part of a classroom curriculum, taking note of these six signposts could help convince educators to give it a try.
We’ve covered Words of the Wiser, Again and Again, Memory Moments, Aha! Moments, and contrast and contradictions. Which means we’ve made it to the final signpost: Tough Questions.
This signpost appears in a text when a character is uncertain and ask themselves a difficult question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Sometimes, that question may come from a mentor figure asking the character what they’re going to do. Either way, the character is being asked to look at some aspect of their life that is going to shape their path forward.
When we’re reading and encounter a tough question, we think about what it says about the character, how they might answer it, and how it will affect their future based on what they choose.
This is a gold mine for writers! This is the level of engagement you should be striving for on the page. When you get the reader to be subconsciously thinking about the consequences the character will face depending on how they choose to act, you’ve done your job. It also keeps the reader turning the page to find out which path they’re going to choose and whether or not they predicted the end.
Using tough questions in the text can feel a bit cliche because the overall format doesn’t usually vary a lot. It could be something like “No matter what, you have to decide which side you're on.” or maybe even simpler “What would she do now–no matter her choice, someone was going to be mad.” But this familiarity is what makes them so wonderful to use to engage the reader because we’ve all been in those situations and it will make the situation on the page resonate with us even deeper. These are core questions we ask ourselves more than we even realize.
The tough questions your character asks will help you to clarify their internal conflict as well as the theme of the story. They’re also key to character development. In the end, their answer is based on the events of the story and how they’ve grown or regressed. Encountering that tough question, that do or die moment, is a major part of their character arc.
A reminder from the last video is that these elements intersect and build on one another. The tough question a character encounters might be posed by their mentor, who’s given them words of wisdom to learn from. Their response could be an Aha! Moment as the conflict or thing they’ve encountered Again & Again finally make sense, which will lead them to act in a way that contradicts who they were in the beginning of the story. Basically, none of these exist in isolation, so use all of them to increase reader engagement and power up your storytelling.
If you want more information and examples of the signpost, check otu the book Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst. I highly recommend it.
As always, your mileage may vary! Tell me about your favorite tough questions a character encounters in the comments below. My personal favorite is when a character has to decide whether or not they’re going to keep perpetuating a family tradition that doesn’t serve them.
This mini-course focuses ONLY on developing the character voice in your manuscript. As the most popular unit from our Revision Strategies course, we wanted to make it available for those who are looking solely for this aspect of leveling up their craft!
